Porcelain Keys (18 page)

When the door opened and I saw Thomas, it was like coming up for air after being underwater for two weeks. He looked pale and his face seemed thinner, like he hadn’t eaten for days. He tried to smile, but only managed to straighten his lips. I threw myself into his arms, assuring myself that he was still living and breathing.

After a long hug, he pulled me into his room and closed the door behind him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to see you.”

The bathroom light was on, casting a dim glow into the room.

“Where’s Richard?” I asked.

“He went back to California.” His voice was reserved, quiet. He stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed.

I took off my coat and the scarf, tossing them in a chair by the window, then sat beside him. He seemed tense, like if he relaxed, the weight on his shoulders would crush him.
I laced my fingers through his; they felt cold and lifeless. I wanted him to look at me and tell me everything he was feeling, but he kept his head down and his eyes on the floor.

“How are you?” I whispered, desperate to hear his voice.

It took him a long time to answer. “It was my fault,” he finally whispered, so low I barely heard him.

“What do you mean?” I angled myself toward him and touched his forearm. He winced, and I realized there was a bandage on his arm where he’d been burned.

“The fire started downstairs. In my room.”

“How do you know?”

“The fire chief told me. I left my heat tools on, and somehow . . .” He shook his head. “Somehow . . .” He leaned over and dropped his head into his hands. His back began shaking, and his sniffles filled the quiet room. “They’re gone because of me.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It was an accident.”

He lay on the bed, and turning on his side, he burst into tears. I was curled behind him in an instant, sliding my arm under his neck and cradling his head against mine. I wrapped my other arm around his chest and felt his abdomen shake as he cried.

“Talk to me,” I whispered.

“I . . . can’t . . . ,” he said between ragged breaths. I rubbed his chest and he drew in a stuttered lungful of air, trying to catch his breath. “I can’t stop thinking,” he cried. “I keep replaying that night over and over, calculating, reliving, trying to set things right. If I would have installed the smoke detectors like my dad asked. If the door wouldn’t have been locked. If I could’ve found my stupid keys. If Richard would have woken up my parents before he saved himself. If you—”

My heart stopped as I registered what he was about to say. “If I hadn’t pulled you back.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I would’ve had time to get them before the second floor came down.”

“Thomas, I’m so sorry. I . . . I didn’t have time to think. I just didn’t want to lose you.”

“It doesn’t matter. None of that would matter if I hadn’t been so thoughtless and left on my heat tools.” Another heartbreaking cry broke through his lips.

“Thomas . . .”

“Shhh. Don’t, Aria. Don’t.” He put his hand on mine.

I stayed quiet, trying in vain to find words that might comfort him. Over the years, the pain from Mom’s death had dulled somewhat, like an overused knife. But hearing Thomas crying and feeling him tremble in my arms sharpened my pain again. Not like the sting of a razor, but like a serrated blade, sawing back and forth, cutting deeper with each stroke. I saw myself in him, and I felt his pain because I knew it all too well. And I knew from experience that nothing I could say would make a dent in the agony he was feeling. So instead I kissed his head, stroked his hair, rubbed his chest.

I held him for the rest of the night, listening to him cry, feeling his body shake with each new wave of emotion. I cried my own silent tears, not wanting him to feel the need to comfort me. He finally drifted off to sleep in the early hours of morning, just as the sky started to light up. And when he fell asleep, I finally fell asleep too.

It was late morning when I woke up, and Thomas was lying next to me on his side, still asleep. I propped myself
on my elbow and looked at him. I hadn’t noticed the night before, but he was in his jeans and sweater, and his hiking boots were still on his feet. His hair was disheveled and his lips were dry and chapped, but his face was peaceful. I decided he needed to eat something, so I went to the motel office to get some continental breakfast. I loaded a tray with bagels, yogurt, and fruit, then added two tall glasses of orange juice.

He was sitting at the desk when I came into the room, spinning a pen on the surface. “I thought you could use some food,” I said, setting the tray in front of him.

A fleeting smile passed across his lips when he saw the food, the first smile I’d seen from him since Christmas Eve. He picked up the orange juice and chugged the entire glass.

“You can have mine too,” I said, placing it in front of him.

I sat on the bed with my legs folded beneath me and watched him pick at his food. He managed a few bites, then went back to spinning the pen, a troubled frown creasing his brow. I sensed the spinning pen mirrored what was going on in his own mind.

“The funeral is next Friday in Pasadena,” he said, his voice quiet and somber.

“I’ll come with you.”

He turned to look at me. “You need to stay here and prepare for your audition. It’s only weeks away.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’d rather be there for you.”

He got up and sat next to me on the bed. “It does matter. You have to get into Juilliard. And you can’t afford to miss a week of practice. It could make all the difference.”

I raised a shoulder. “I’ll be fine. And anyway, there’s always next year.”

He laid his hand on mine. “No. I want you to stay here.”
He gave me a pleading look I couldn’t argue with. A look that reached inside me and rattled something loose. His expression darkened, and he looked down at his hands. “Besides—I don’t think I’ll even go to the funeral.”

“What?”

He stood and went to the window, where he stared through the pane and blew out a ragged breath. “What am I going to say to people when they ask what happened?”

I hesitated. “You’re going to say it was an accident.”

He shook his head, then mumbled something under his breath that sounded like, “They’ve already heard that one.”

Wondering if I’d misheard, I rose and went to him. “What do you mean?”

He was quiet for a long time, then said, “Nothing.” There was a despondency in his face I’d never seen before, and it sent an uneasy chill down my back. I searched for the words to reel him back in, to rescue him from the ravine he seemed lost in. But my seventeen-year-old mind had no wisdom to offer, no counsel to help him make sense of what he was feeling. All I could offer was myself. I wrapped my arms around his waist, and his hand fell on my back, but it felt stiff.

“Are you coming back here after the funeral?” I asked.

His silence answered the question.

I pulled away and stared at him. “You’re not coming back?”

He released a sigh. “I’m going to stay in Pasadena until I graduate.”

“But what about—”

“Our plans are still the same, Aria.” He looked down at me. “I’ll come get you in June, and we’ll drive to New York together. We’ll still be together, okay?”

“June is five months away. Why can’t you just finish high school here?”

“Where am I going to live?”

“Where will you live if you go to Pasadena?”

“My parents still have a house there. Richard’s moving in. That’s one of the reasons I need to stay there for a while. My parents have a ton of stuff in their old house and in storage, and I need to go through it and decide what to do with everything. If I leave it up to Richard, he’ll just pawn it all and spend it on drugs.”

I felt my breath accelerate, my hands go cold. I thought about what he’d said the night before, how he might have had time to save his parents if I hadn’t held him back. Maybe he was more angry with me than I realized. “Please . . .” The broken plea sounded desperate as it escaped my lips.

His eyes softened. “Aria,” he groaned, “please don’t make this harder than it already is.”

“Please don’t leave me,” I whispered as my eyes filled with tears.

He put his palm on my cheek and wiped away the tears that were spilling over. “I can’t stay,” he said, tears brimming in his own eyes. “Right now I need to get as far away from here as I can.”

I dropped my head.

“Listen to me,” he whispered as he slid his hand behind my neck. “I love you. I could never live without you. I just . . . need to get away from here . . . to settle the storm that’s whirling around in my head.”

The only response I could muster was a sad, broken cry.

“Look,” he said, “you’re going to get accepted to Juilliard, and in the summer, I’ll come pick you up.”

I nodded as more tears rolled down my cheeks.

“Do you trust me?”

I nodded again.

“Then believe me when I say that I can’t stay. Trust me that I will come back for you. Trust that we’ll be together.”

He leaned in and kissed me in a way that sealed his promise.

After packing his few things into a backpack, he slung it over his shoulder and opened the door, letting the morning sun and the cold winter air spill in. I put on my coat and picked up the scarf, then went and stood in front of him.

“I didn’t get a chance to give this to you,” I said, lifting it over his head and pulling it snug around his neck. I had been right: the blue in the scarf matched his eyes perfectly. “It was supposed to be for Christmas.”

He looked down and picked up one end of the scarf, examining it. “Did you make it?”

I nodded.

His eyes glistened as they met mine. “Thank you,” he whispered, pulling me into his arms.

We went out to where our cars were parked. He opened his car door and tossed his backpack on the passenger seat, then turned to look at me. “Aria, there’s something else you need to know.”

“What’s that?”

He leaned against the driver seat and took one of my hands in his. “One of the firefighters told me . . . that your dad was the one who found you and carried you out. He saved your life.”

I was speechless, stunned. I couldn’t even begin to speculate what that meant. So I nodded and pushed it to the back of my mind, focusing instead on the fact that
Thomas was about to get in his Bronco and leave me for five months. He reached in the backseat, pulled out the painting he’d given me on Christmas Eve, and handed it to me. I took it, then leaned into him and wrapped my arms around him. He held me and planted a kiss in my hair. I clung to him, wishing I never had to let go, fearing that if I did, I’d never see him again.

“I love you,” I whispered. “Promise me you’ll come back.”

“I’ll see you in June,” he finally said, pulling away from me.

“June.” I tried to sound cheerful, but the word came out wrapped in despair. Then he got in his Bronco, pulled out of the parking lot, and disappeared.

A
fter a couple
weeks at school of people asking me where Thomas was, I went back to eating lunch by myself in the auditorium so I wouldn’t have to explain what had happened or that I hadn’t heard from him. I hadn’t called him because I knew his plate was full, and I wanted to let him take care of things at home without worrying about me. He had Nathaniel’s number. He would call when he was ready to talk.

To keep my mind off Thomas, I thought about Dad instead, contemplating and analyzing just what it meant that he’d saved my life. Did it mean he cared about me after all? Did he rush into the burning house to save me because he knew I was there, or simply because he was on duty? I wondered if he regretted the way he’d treated me and how he felt now that I was gone. Sometimes the little girl in me wanted to show up on his doorstep and say, “Remember me? Remember how you used to push me on the swing so high that it felt like my toes would brush the clouds? Remember how you used to smile and
pat my head as I awkwardly coiled a worm on my fishing hook?”

I wondered if we could ever return to the easy relationship we once had. Maybe he was sorry but was too ashamed to approach me. But even if he apologized, was it possible to repair a breach that had been so long in the making? Even after all this time, I didn’t understand what had gone wrong. All I knew was that the demise of our relationship had begun shortly after Mom’s death.

I thought about these things for weeks, and one February afternoon, I borrowed Nathaniel’s car and drove to Dad’s house to get answers.

Instead of pulling into Dad’s driveway, I parked on the street behind the pines, giving myself a couple extra minutes to figure out what to say. It had stormed the night before, and a thick layer of snow blanketed everything in sight. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. “Be brave,” I breathed. “It’s not a big deal.” I got out of the car and walked slowly up the drive, listening to the snow crunch beneath my feet.

I found him on the porch, tossing shovelfuls of snow over the railing. When he saw me approaching, he stopped and held the shovel upright. He looked surprised, and after I climbed the steps, we just stared at each other for a moment, each of us waiting for the other person to speak.

I wanted to at least thank him for saving my life, but when I finally broke the silence, the words didn’t quite come out that way. “Why did you save me?” I asked. “If you don’t love me or care about me, why did you bother?”

He bowed his head, his brow wrinkled with an odd mixture of confusion and shame. “Of course I didn’t want you to die. I knew you were probably in there, so
I went in and found you.” He looked up and released a long sigh. “It’s cold out here. Would you like to go inside and talk?”

I shook my head. The last time I’d been in his house, he’d left me with a visible reminder of his volatility.

He backed up a few paces and brushed some snow from the porch swing before sitting down. After setting aside the shovel, he gestured to the space next to him. I stared at him, appraising his expression and posture. His shoulders were slumped contritely, his face sober and penitent. But I couldn’t bring myself to join him on the swing.